Are you interested in learning more about entrepreneurship? Do you want to know if entrepreneurship is the right path for you? Are you looking for entrepreneurs to learn from? In this article, you’ll learn what is an entrepreneur, how to be an entrepreneur and whether or not entrepreneurship is the right fit for you.

What is an Entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is a person who starts at least one business and takes financial risks to grow the business into something greater than his or herself. In addition to starting the business the entrepreneur leads the business though they’re not always CEO. Early stage entrepreneurs wear many hats. They’ll take on responsibilities ranging from marketing to budgeting to product design. Solopreneurs are one type of entrepreneur. They typically start and run businesses solo, or in other words by themselves. Almost all businesses are started by entrepreneurs.

Why Do You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

It’s important to ask yourself why you want to be an entrepreneur. Are you passionate about business? Entrepreneurs need to be business savvy in order to have their business succeed. You might not have a degree in business but you’ll need the qualities and the intuition to understand what the needs of your business are. Do you feel uncomfortable working a 9 to 5 job? Many entrepreneurs struggle to fit in in a steady 9 to 5 job. You may feel your work ethic is undervalued as you always put in more effort than your colleagues. Your coworkers might think that you’re showing off or sucking up though you know that it’s not the case. You may feel suffocated working a structured job and hours. Perhaps you need more freedom and flexibility in your daily routine.

It’s important to ask yourself before diving in whether not not entrepreneurship is going to solve your underlying problem. If you can’t manage a high volume workload at your 9 to 5, entrepreneurship might not be the best fit for you as your workload drastically increases as you succeed. If you’re looking for more freedom or flexibility, entrepreneurship can offer that to you. Some choose entrepreneurship because they want the potential to make unlimited amounts of money. Yet, most entrepreneurs running early stage businesses don’t make pocket any money as they consistently reinvest their profits back into their business. Entrepreneurship is more of a long-term game. And if played right, the rewards can be huge.

Myers-Briggs and Entrepreneurship

Before diving into how to be an entrepreneur, let’s take a look at your personality type and how it plays into your role as an entrepreneur. Myers-Briggs is a professional personality test created by Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers that is now used to understand personality types. Myers-Briggs can tell you what your strong suits are and what your weaknesses are. They often provide guidelines for the types of jobs you’d succeed in. While some personality types are better suited to entrepreneurship than others, there have been successful entrepreneurs with one of these 16 personality traits. You can complete the Myers-Briggs personality test online for a small fee.

How to Be An Entrepreneur – Step 1: Come Up with a Business Idea

Coming up with a business idea is a lot harder than people make it seem. Not because it’s hard to come up with an idea, but because it’s hard to come up with one that’ll be profitable. Focus on creating a business that solves a problem. The more annoying the problem, the more desperate people will be to find a solution to that problem.

You can also choose to solve a problem by fighting for a cause. Maybe you’re trying to raise money for a charity or solve a social issue. If you donate a percentage of sales to charity, you can position that the problem you’re trying to solve is the cause you’re fighting for.

Another thing you want to consider when coming up with a business idea is how you’ll differentiate yourself from your competitors. Sometimes doing something differently than your competitors, even if you’re selling similar products, helps your brand grow. For example, offering same day shipping, having lower prices, or including a handwritten thank you card in each package.We recently published a post on the startup business ideas that’ll make you money. If you’re stuck for ideas you can start from our list.

How to Be An Entrepreneur – Step 2: Do Market Research

Once you come up with a business idea, it’s time to determine if there’s a market for your niche. You can start by looking up other brands in your niche. Do they have a lot of followers and post engagement? Is their revenue public? If so, how much are they making?

You also want to determine if there’s a growing market for the niche. You can look up industry statistics on sites like Statista and Statistic Brain. You can also use tools like Google Trends to determine whether there is higher or lower search volume than usual within your niche.

How to Be An Entrepreneur – Step 3: Build Your Business

In this step, you’ll start creating your business. But, you won’t do everything to a full-scale as you still need to test the market. For example, if you start an online store, you’ll want to have a few products for customers to choose from and to run ads to. You’ll also want to have a contact us page, an about us page and shipping and returns information. It’s also a good idea to include a couple of blog posts to show customers that there is activity on your website. You’ll also want to make sure your homepage is presentable with a visually-appealing banner image, a professional logo and an easy-to-navigate layout. The website needs to be attractive and professional enough to build customer trust to help you land your first few sales in the next stage.

How to Be An Entrepreneur – Step 4: Test the Market

An important step when learning how to be an entrepreneur is to test the market. If you decide to run an online store, for example, you’ll want to have at least 10 products on your store before you start marketing. You can test the market a number of ways. First, you can contact influencers on Instagram or YouTube within your niche and pay for a shoutout. You’ll need to contact a few different influencers to ensure they’re able to convert their audience. Second, you’ll want to run ads on Facebook. Create a few different ads targeting different audiences and products. You’ll want to run the ads for at least a week to understand which types of ads work best.

How to Be An Entrepreneur – Step 5: Evaluate

The last step in learning how to be an entrepreneur is to evaluate your results. After working on your store and testing the market did you generate sales or fall short of your goal? The good news is that no matter how your business started, it’s not game over. If you generated sales and made a profit, it’s time to scale your efforts. If you made a profit through Facebook Ads then you’ll want to reinvest your profit into the ads. If you didn’t generate any sales after testing the market it could be for a number of reasons. For example, maybe you didn’t target the right audience or promoted the wrong product. If you haven’t made any sales but grew your social media following it could be that you showed the wrong product to the right customer. It also indicates that there is an audience for your niche.

It’s important to ask yourself what problems you ran into while testing the market. Did you get high engagement on the ad but no clicks to your website? It might be a good idea to optimize for conversions in your ads. Did you get a lot of traffic but no sales? It could mean that your customer was unhappy with your product price. It may also mean you’re buying bad traffic. Avoid buying traffic from websites like Fiverr as they typically aren’t reputable. However, the best test to determine if you have bad traffic is to have a Facebook retargeting pixel running on your website. If you present a different product or offer to the traffic in a retargeting ad, does it convert?

You also want to look into what the highlights of the experience were. Did you accomplish your goals? Generating sales is an important accomplishment. Yet, you also want to look at how much traffic your site had, how many social media followers you gained, and what you learned from the experience. You need apply what you’ve learned from testing the market to continue business growth.

Nicole Martins Ferreira

Nicole Martins Ferreira is a self-employed eCommerce entrepreneur. Her passion for eCommerce is so strong that she works on her website 7 days a week and has never been happier. She is committed to helping others succeed and is constantly learning new tricks to provide more value to entrepreneurs. Follow Nicole on Twitter at @NicoleMarFer